The use of computer systems and computer-related technologies continues to increase at a rapid pace. This increased use of computer systems has influenced the advances made to computer-related technologies. Indeed, computer systems have increasingly become an integral part of the business world and the activities of individual consumers. Computer systems may be used to carry out several business, industry, and academic endeavors. The wide-spread use of computers has been accelerated by the increased use of computer networks, including the Internet. Many businesses use one or more computer networks to communicate and share data between the various computers connected to the networks. The productivity and efficiency of employees often requires human and computer interaction.
Computer technologies used by consumers and by the business world continue to demand that the efficiency of these technologies increase. These demands have led to advances in computer technologies that have improved the ways in which data are stored on a computer system. Storage capacity within a computer system is a finite quantity. In order to store as many data as possible within a computer system, technology exists that eliminates redundant data so that multiple copies of the same data are not stored within a computer system. Eliminating redundant data improves data protection, increases the speed of the computer system, and reduces costs associated with the storage of the data. Computer systems may include a mechanism that performs this elimination of redundant data. This mechanism may be known as a deduplication appliance (or deduplication store).
While the storage capacity of a computer system may be increased by eliminating redundant data, the amount of data that is stored also continues to increase. As such, the need for more storage capacity will also increase. Data may be removed from the storage of a computer system and stored at a location external to the computer. Currently, however, data that have been deduplicated within the computer system cannot be transferred to an external storage device while remaining in a deduplicated form. This causes the storage capacity of the external storage device to also increase as non-deduplicated data are stored. As shown from the above discussion, there is a need for systems and methods to migrate a data object from a deduplication store to an external domain while maintaining the object in deduplicated form.